170 BULLETIN 183, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



cations of a doorway at one end; B had a passageway with steps. 

 Artifacts inchided a cord-marked grit-tempered pot with vertical 

 rim, romided shoulder, and conoidal base; two grit-tempered clay 

 elbow pipes ; part of an unfinished limestone effigy pipe ; the tip of a 

 flat bone needle; a perforated dog's tooth; a tubular columella shell 

 bead; a flat shell effigy; a limestone discoidal; and several stemmed 

 points. 



Just south of Albany, in Whiteside County, 111., on the left bank of 

 the Mississippi (fig. 20, 17) , members of the Davenport Academy of 

 Science opened a number of mounds prior to 1875 (Pratt, 1876). 

 These were mostly built of earth, but in one of the largest, which was 

 about 12 feet high and had been dug some time before (Pratt, 1876, 

 p. 102)— 



was discovered an inclosure of "dry wall" some ten feet square, containing a 

 number of skeletons supposed to have been buried in a sitting posture, with no 

 indication of any covering or floor ever having been there, save the earth of 

 which the whole mound was composed. A portion of this wall which will 

 remained exposed, vpe carefully removed for examination, and found it to be 

 built of fossiliferous limestone . . . laid up with tolerable evenness on the inner 

 side. It was about 3 feet high, 2 feet thick at the top, and 3 at the base, piled 

 up loosely, the lower stones broad and flat, rather heavier than one man could 

 well carry, and lying on the clean yellowish sand. Some of the stones had been 

 burned red previously to being placed in the wall. 



At about the same time, in the eastern part of the county, on Rock 

 River near Sterling (fig. 20, 18), Holbrook investigated a group of 

 mounds. In the first one opened (1877, p. 535) he discovered — 

 a dolmen or quadrilateral wall about 10 feet long, 4 feet high, and 4^ feet wide. 

 It had been built of lime rock from a quarry nearby and was covered with 

 large flat stones. No mortar or cement had been used. The whole structure 

 rested on the surface of the natural soil, the interior of which had been scooped 

 out to enlarge the chamber. Inside of the dolmen I found the remains of 8 

 human skeletons, two very large teeth of an unknown animal, two fossils, . . . 

 and a plummet. One of the long bones had been splintered ; the fragment had 

 united but there remained large morbid growths of bone (exostosis) in several 

 places. One of the skulls presented a circular opening about the size of a silver 

 dime. This perforation had been made during life, for the edges had begun to 

 heal. 



So far as it is possible to judge from the data available there can be 

 little doubt that the chambered mounds in Adams and Whiteside 

 Counties, 111., as described above, are of the same type as the stone 

 vaults of central Missouri. The remaining examples indicated on the 

 map (fig. 20, 16, 19, 20) are perhaps more questionable. The first, at 

 Snake Den, in Henry County, Iowa, is backed only by hearsay evi- 

 dence. The mound. No. 8 in a group of nine, is briefly described by 

 Banta and Garretson (1883, pp. 532-533) as being "5 feet high and 30 

 feet in diameter. It had been opened previously to the visit of the 

 authors. It is said to have contained a stone vault, in which were dis- 



